12 Labours of Hercules
A very casual time-management game. Things never got challenging (except for one level where I really had to think about my strategy before I succeeded), but I still enjoyed playing. Nice graphics, nice music, no bugs. The right game to play when you want to relax after a hard day's work and just have some minutes left to play.

Complete list of finished games in 2014

Of the ones I haven't played yet due to them not being in GOG's catalog, Emerald City Confidential interests me most, I heard it doesn't have many meaty puzzles but then again that isn't necessarily a bad thing if it's a fun game in other aspects.

Each of the Wadjet games has its own strengths so it's very much personal preference and hard to compare them, overall I'd list my favorites as such:

Puzzles: Resonance
Atmosphere: Gemini Rue
Style: Primordia
Story: Blackwell (as a series, you might as well play all of them since the background story ties all of them together; no pun intended even though ties are overused in this series :)

It's kinda tricky though to try and rank these games because none of these games are entirely consistent A-Z and thus have ups and downs in every category, except for Primordia in terms of style which it has in spades from beginning to end.

Escape Goat 2

Lots of rooms, goes from stupidly easy to insane. You can finish the game easily, but there is a lot of extra content after that. The goat and the mouse have to collaborate often, and some special powers mix things up a bit. The types of puzzles are varied and kept me surprised and entertained for about 9 hours. I finished it with 90% unlocked.

It was a very nice surprise.

Outlast DLC : Whistleblower

Well, it's more of the same more or less, but for some reason I enjoyed it more than the main game. Playing as a Murkoff employee made the story much more interresting and also the ambience was creepier this time around. When you go into the 'garden' there isn't rain and thunder anymore, instead everything's foggy now and that reminded me a lot of 'Silent Hill'. I liked that a lot. The gameplay mechanic is kinda the same as in the main game, but the enemy appearances aren't as predictable anymore. You also get introduced to 2 new main villain's, which were even more terrifying than the ones from the main game. Especially that guy called 'Gluskin' was seriusly fucked up and very creepy. So in total I enjoyed this DLC more than the main game and it is scarier this time, but still far away from being 'the scariest game of all-time'.

I beat Secret Agent, the Apogee platformer. It was fun, although the level design could have been more inspired and the limited collection of enemies and obstacles made it rather repetitive. I felt like I should give Apogee a shot, since parts of the forums go into rapture whenever we get a new platformer from them, and I don't regret the decision, but I don't suppose I'll buy any more of their games.

I didn't actually have the self-control to abandon Mr. Bree+, so I'm striking it from my "finished" list. I collected all of the red puzzle pieces, and am a third of the way through the Slaughterhouse; so far, I think those levels are better-designed then a lot of the regular levels, and it was a mistake to section them off like that. I nearly had to give up due to technical reasons; the game was freezing, frequently and randomly, during Level 49 when I played it on Steam*. Not frequently enough to have stopped me from beating the level, but frequently enough to prevent me from getting the red puzzle piece. This is a known issue (i.e. talked about in the forum), but nobody posted a solution. So I installed the GOG version, the save file from Steam worked perfectly with the GOG version, and the GOG version didn't have that bug. Score one for the home team.

* I have it on Steam as well as GOG because I always redeem all my bundle keys; this was from Groupees. I was playing it on Steam because Steam's client lends itself to glancing through my games and deciding to play one on a whim a lot better then GOG's system.

Sep 7 - Lure of the Temptress

Annoying glitches really take a lot away from this game. Just trying to walk past characters and talk to people can sometimes take several attempts because your character will just start wandering around the screen trying to find a position and then giving up. At one point, Ratpouch was bouncing back and forth off the bottom of a screen and it took several attempts to get him to start following me again.

Without these glitches, this would be an average point-and-click.

The Last Door.

And it was a pleasant surprise. I expected much less but got a very well done game, if a bit short. Its atmosphere was amazing.

Meltdown

Very nice music, pleasant graphics, fun twin-stick shooter gameplay.

Clear levels, use level up points to upgrade your skill, money to purchase equipment, chips and money to upgrade equipment. There's a Quick Play mode for random levels (populated with enemies the game decides are suitable to your character level), and an endless wave Survival mode which you need to level up enough to unlock.

Once you get to max level 55 you can enter the newgame+ish Prestiege mode - you lose all your equipment, levels and map progression in exchange for some minor health and shield boost, access to restricted equipment (which you still need to meet level requirements for buying), and "leveled up" enemies. You keep your current money & chips though, so it might make sense to grind a bit to give your level 1 Prestiege character a head start :)

Because there's never enough money to buy what you want....

Anyway, that's about it. There's really not much depth to this game, just some quick fun robot shooting action.

I have now beaten the Slaughterhouse in Mr. Bree+, and can add it to my completed games list with pride. I have mixed feelings about that game; sometimes, the challenge was well-designed and ... well, challenging. Other times it was just obnoxious. For example, in the levels where nets fall from the ceiling, sometimes I'd run under it and get caught and die, and the next time I'd get caught and die, and the next time I'd run past the net and it would fall on the ground behind me, and I didn't know why I succeeded that time and not the others, I did the exact same thing each time, hold down the run button and press right, not a whole lot of opportunity for error I'd have thought.

I've heard that if you sit through the credits, you get a satisfying ending. I never got a satisfying ending; in fact, the game froze on the "Thank You For Playing" screen and I had to CTR-Alt-Delete my way out.

But the important thing is, I beat Mr. Bree+.

Complete list here.

(Oh, and I finished with Akiba's Trip; that was already on my beaten list, but now that I've finished all the possible paths, it's actually done.)

Congrats!

Fallout: New Vegas + Blood Money + Old World Blues + Honest Hearts + Lonesome Road.
A completionist playthrough with all quests that aren't mutualy exclusive complete (for those mutualy exclusive - I took ones against the Legion), all stupid achievements unlocked (succeeded in 74 out of 75 cases - no way I'm going to win 30 games of Caravan) and I tried For the Enclave mod but I guess it got stuck and I can't go on with the plotline.
What can I say? New Vegas is friggin' good :)

The Bridge

This Escher-inspired puzzle platformer is one of the better that I've played. The game mechanic centers on rotating the whole playfield to turn walls and ceilings into floors, as well as to move around other elements. Special features are added in each chapter that increase the puzzle permutations. The last is probably the most difficult to use effectively, but a combination of intuition, logic, and experimentation will see you through.

The graphics are excellent, detailed pencil sketches that capture the improbably structures beautifully. The main character resembles M. C. Escher himself, which is a nice touch and also makes for a more distinct player than some games go for. The music is ambient and effective, though not especially memorable, which is fine since it is meant to meld into the whole perception. And the puzzle escalation is generally smooth.

I won't spoil the ending, but just say that there is more to play beyond the central four chapters if you so desire.

Recommended, especially at the amazing sale price it was offered at. But worthwhile at the full price too, and a title that could conceivably fit into GOG's own catalogue.

Onto the list it goes.

I just complied.

Good move! I hope you enjoy it, along with the rest of the folks who've seized upon this opportunity. I picked up an extra copy for gifting as well.

Finished I.G.I. 2. Judging from the number of comments in the game's forum, not a lot of folks have picked this one up, much less finished it. A shame, because IMO it's an extremely enjoyable game that improves significantly on its predecessor simply because it lets you save mid-level (on the default difficulty, you get three saves per level). This one tweak makes the game infinitely more playable especially for time-challenged players like myself, as compared with IGI 1. Like IGI 1, the AI can be really frustrating in that baddies have pinpoint accuracy with all weapons from just about any range; this, combined with the limited saves, makes it almost mandatory to exploit the AI's dumber tendencies in some of the harder levels (i.e. you can find a protected position, fire off a few shots to alert the enemies, and then pick them off at point blank range one after another as they parade to your position, until the level is depopulated, leaving you free to complete the objectives without much fear.) All in all, a solid, rather old-school FPS with decent graphics for the era, high but not unfair difficulty, and a large campaign with lots of interesting locations. Definitely recommended.

PS - there are some fairly serious bugs to contend with in the GOG version that are mentioned in the game's forums. While quickloading a mid-level save works fine, if you die in a level prior to making your first save, you must reload the level from the main menu or the graphics will glitch out. Not a huge deal but still highly annoying.

Second (and I assume this is intentional behavior) if the player is in the prone position and very near a wall (which is often, since firing from the prone is far more accurate) your ability to mouselook will often disappear, presumably because the game is calculating that the player-model doesn't have enough room to physically turn around, or something. This feature/bug will lead to many unnecessary deaths, but once you understand when it happens, you can play around it.